Rainfall

Spring rainfall across the metropolitan area was mostly below average with some locations receiving up to 30% less than normal. Although rainfall totals for the month of October were near average, rainfall across the region was well below average through September and November 2011. Rainfall totals for the season as a whole were typically 80 to 110mm on the Adelaide plains, and ranging between 120 to 200mm in the Adelaide Hills. The wettest location in the Adelaide metropolitan and hills area during spring 2011 was at Piccadilly (Woodhouse) with 211.3 mm.

Adelaide (Kent Town) recorded 114.6 mm for spring 2011, which is 21.3 mm below the long-term spring rainfall average. In 2010, spring rainfall at Kent Town totalled 124.6 mm ( Note that the rainfall readings used here for climate records are from the manual Kent Town gauge. Some Adelaide rainfall totals on some Bureau of Meteorology web pages may differ as they are from automatic rainfall recordings).

Temperature

Both maximum and minimum temperatures were warmer than average across the Adelaide metropolitan and hills area this spring. September and November days were warmer than average, with cooler days in October, while night-time temperatures were cooler in September but warmer in both October and November.

The spring 2011 average maximum temperature at Adelaide (Kent Town) was 23.3 °C, which is 1.3 °C above the average spring maximum. The hottest maximum temperature recorded in the Adelaide metropolitan and hills area was 38.3 °C, recorded at both Edinburgh RAAF and Parafield Airport on the 18th of November. The coldest day was recorded at Mount Lofty on September 10, with 7.9 °C. Parafield Airport recorded the warmest days on average with 24 °C, which is 2.0 °C above spring average recorded at this location. The coolest days on average were recorded at Mount Lofty with 17.2 °C.

Minimum temperatures were also warmer than average across the Adelaide metropolitan and hills area. The mean minimum temperature for spring 2011 at Adelaide (Kent Town) was 12.7, which is 1.0 °C above the average spring mean minimum, and is ranked as the third warmest since records began in 1977. Last spring the mean minimum was 11.7°C. The coldest night during spring was recorded at Edinburgh RAAF on the 25th of September where the minimum went down to 1.2 °C. Noarlunga recorded the warmest night during spring with 24.6 °C on 18th November. The coolest nights on average were at Mount Lofty where minimum temperatures averaged 8.3 °C.

Notes

A Seasonal Climate Summary is prepared to list the main features of the weather in Adelaide Metro & Hills using the most timely and accurate information available on the date of publication; it will generally not be updated. Later information, including data that has had greater opportunity for quality control, will be presented in the Monthly Weather Review, usually published in the fourth week of the month.

This statement has been prepared based on information available at
4 pm on Wednesday 30 November 2011.
Some checks have been made on the data, but it is possible that results will change
as new information becomes available.

Averages are long-term means based on observations from
all available years of record, which vary widely from site to site.
They are not shown for sites with less than 20 years of record, as they cannot then be calculated reliably.
The median
is sometimes more representative than the
mean
of long-term average rain.

The Rank indicates how rainfall this time compares with the climate record for the site,
based on the
decile ranking
(very low rainfall is in decile 1, low in decile 2 or 3,
average in decile 4 to 7, high in decile 8 or 9
and very high is in decile 10).
The Fraction of average shows how much rain has fallen this time as a
percentage of the long-term mean.